The invention relates generally to bottle cleaning machines and more specifically to a spraying device for use in such bottle cleaning machines. The spraying device of the present invention is of the type which includes a conveyor chain which operates either continuously or intermittently through the device and which carries bottle receiving receptacles for supporting therein the bottles to be cleaned in the machine. Further, the device is of the type including one or more spray tubes mounted for pivotal movement through a predetermined spraying zone from a starting position to an end position and then to be returned to the starting position.
Previously known bottle cleaning machines have been equipped with fixed spray tubes. The bottle receiving receptacle (sometimes referred to as "a cell") carried bottles therein in a position with their open mouth held downwardly, and had to be advanced intermittently in order to receive sufficient spray during the spraying cycle for cleaning. Such prior operations, however, required that the bottles carried in their respective bottle receiving receptacles had to constantly be accelerated and decelerated in the direction of movement, thus requiring a great deal of driving power which was needed to overcome large inertial forces.
In order to avoid this disadvantage and to provide a sufficient amount of spray for cleaning, the conveyor chains carrying the bottle receiving receptacles were made to be continuously advanced and the spray tubes were arranged to move with the chain and be retarded for a certain period of time and then be returned to a starting position. This was accomplished by providing that the spray tubes were secured in a rack suspended for swinging movement and which could be moved through a predetermined spraying path from a starting position to an end position and then back again to the starting position. Pivotal drivers were arranged on one or both sides of the rack panel and protruded into the path of travel of the chain so as to be engaged by the studs of the chain when in the starting position in order to impart a driving force to the rack so as to cause the rack to be advanced through the spraying zone. The pivotal drivers were then disengaged from the studs of the chain at the end position of the zone completing the spraying operation.
This type of device also required that considerable masses be moved back and forth through the zones within a relatively short period of time thus resulting in various elements such as the chain studs and the drivers of the rack engaging each other a considerable number of times thus being subjected to considerable wear. Additionally, as a result of the suspension of the rack for swinging movement, the rack was caused to describe a circular path so that the central position of the spray nozzles was not maintained and as a result the spray emanating from the nozzle was not efficiently utilized. As a result, the spray jet from the nozzle was caused to strike the supporting surfaces of the bottle receiving receptacles and at the mouth of the bottles so that effective spraying action was lost, particularly at the starting and the end positions of the spraying zone.
A further disadvantage of the foregoing types of devices is that the alignment of the spray with the bottles to be sprayed was a function of and relied upon the positioning of the chain studs of the conveyor chains. This resulted in inaccurate alignment since there was no guarantee of proper spraying alignment when the conveyor chain was extended or if the bottle receiving receptacles were improperly inserted in the chain. This was particularly true since the rack described above carried several spray tubes and the possible different positions of the various bottle cleaning receptacles could not be taken into consideration (see DOS 21 52 429).
It is accordingly an object of the present invention to provide a substantially simplified type of spraying device while avoiding the foregoing disadvantages of the prior art.
A more specific object of the present invention is to reduce the masses which are necessarily required by the use of a rack of the type described above and to provide the possibility of proper alignment which insures an exact correlation of the spray jet and the bottle mouth.
A further object of the present invention is to provide means to guide the spray jet into the bottle mouth in such a way that it covers the entire cross-sectional area of the bottle in the feeding direction of the bottle receiving receptacle so as to avoid inaccuracies caused by turning spray tubes in a circular path.